Our responsibilities, provided we tend to them, are usually the major factor in shaping our lives.  Where we go, when we eat, where and when we sleep, how we spend our hours – these are all largely determined by our various responsibilities.

A roofer’s life has a very different shape from a nurse’s life, as do both from a jockey’s life or a banker’s life, or a farmer’s or a philosopher’s.  A sailor is very differently constrained and occupied than a shepherd or a mother or a plumber or a slave – all because of their varying responsibilities.

When our responsibilities change, the shapes of our lives change.  When their responsibilities disappear and are not replaced, lives, now unanchored, become unmoored, like driftwood, become almost indistinguishable, like sheep.

Prisoners in the penitentiary, even while retaining separate personalities, lead lives that are materially similar and spiritually uniform.  Incarcerated and tended to, they are ironically perfectly liberated, freed from their responsibilities.  That’s why the lives of long-term prisoners tend to become small and picayune, vanishingly uninteresting, colorless and vague.

This is the great temptation of freedom – its demonic allure – the temptation to escape the burdens of responsibility, to render service to no one except oneself.

That’s why St. Paul warns us not to abuse our freedom.  That’s why Christ’s final instruction was Feed my sheep.

And that’s why all demons are wraiths.